Trump

mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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shakahislop said:
it is one of the reasons, maybe not the main reason, why there are countries especially in east africa don't have much in the way of domestic garment production
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Ta-da! Surely Africa could compete on price with those places if there was an incentive to build factories there.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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shakahislop said:
that is pretty much how it works. everyone knew what you were saying by about 1990. there's exceptions eg the US has (well had) a lot of rules about having to buy food aid from american farmers. even the know-how bit is more and more about figuring out how to have people in poor / middle countries who have it.
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Why is sharing know-how so expensive? Just post your know-how online and give them a link.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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shakahislop said:
the transposition of the rentier state idea that people had about extractive industries over to aid always made sense to me though. it never seemed true in the countries that i know well though. still looking for examples of this where someone has properly documented it.
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But you gave a concrete example a couple of posts ago.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
Ta-da! Surely Africa could compete on price with those places if there was an incentive to build factories there.
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probably not tbh. i think a few countries have tried, from vague memory. garment production is a bit of a powerhouse. one of those industry agglomeration things where you need like the factory that makes buttons and the factory that makes zips etc all assembled in a chain. africa is a lot more expensive to do anything in than asia for various reasons. would be pretty hard to compete.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
But you gave a concrete example a couple of posts ago.
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i don't think you've understood the post you're responding to. it's mostly about governance rather than economics. its called rentier state thesis if you're interested in googling. in the late 00s people started to try to make the argument that this also applied to aid as well.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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shakahislop said:
probably not tbh. i think a few countries have tried, from vague memory. garment production is a bit of a powerhouse. one of those industry agglomeration things where you need like the factory that makes buttons and the factory that makes zips etc all assembled in a chain. africa is a lot more expensive to do anything in than asia for various reasons. would be pretty hard to compete.
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But the place is never going to become developed if these step changes don't happen
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
Why was the US sending condoms to Africa rather than purchasing African condoms?
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i don't know anything about condom manufacturing, but it's probably something to do with the rules that the US political system puts on aid, which i think are mostly the outcome of various lobbying efforts in congress. almost universaly regarded as the wrong way to do things.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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shakahislop said:
i don't think you've understood the post you're responding to. it's mostly about governance rather than economics. its called rentier state thesis if you're interested in googling. in the late 00s people started to try to make the argument that this also applied to aid as well.
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You said streetside vendors sell great piles of foreign clothes undermining the wider local economy.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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shakahislop said:
the rules that the US political system puts on aid, which i think are mostly the outcome of various lobbying efforts in congress. almost universaly regarded as the wrong way to do things.
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So if USAID were part of a flawed process perhaps it's for the best that these efforts have been temporarily zeroed.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
But the place is never going to become developed if these step changes don't happen
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well that's the heart of the matter. how does a country develop and what are the underlying forces. what policies should there be. and more concretely for specific poor countries now, what specifically should they do to develop. and what are the costs and downsides of that. what can outside actors eg foreign governments and aid organizations etc do to make it happen. these are big complicated questions where i don't think there are easy answers particularly when you go beyond the theoretical.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
So if USAID were part of a flawed process perhaps it's for the best that these efforts have been temporarily zeroed.
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yeah there is a bit of an undercurrent particularly among the more radical end of the aid world (eg new humanitarian) where people are saying that well, it's a catastrophe, but the old system had some big problems with it anyway. there's an acknowledgement among more or less everyone that the way aid is done isn't perfect. that critique has been there for a long time especially on the left in various forms. actual reform of USAID would have been met with open arms by a lot of people. but you can't get confused. the way they've done it with USAID has made things materially a lot worse. what we have now is a thousand times worse than what we had a couple of months ago. people are starting to try to calculate the cost in human lives and so on and it's going to be huge.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
You said streetside vendors sell great piles of foreign clothes undermining the wider local economy.
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that's not aid though. that's the garment industry basically. plus the rag trade. maybe some small charities, like the christian ones and so on. you'd never hear anyone seriously talking about doing something like that in the big aid world as some kind of project. clothing doesn't really come up.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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@IdleRich I expect it's because Hamas aren't releasing those hostages. The Arab League should have lied that they would involve them in reconstruction cos then they would have released them.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Or to summarise - Biscuits claimed Trump has ended both wars (he hasn't) and that means that Dems could have done it whenever they wanted cos they had complete power and Hamas etc had no agency... then forced to admit that Trump hasn't ended any wars MB skates over the fact of his baldfaced lie and says that it's not Trump's fault, it's all down to Hamas etc When it's pointed out that he'd earlier claimed that Trump had ended the wars Biscuits replies insanely that to say this is to somehow deny any agency to Hamas and co.

Hilarious
 
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